The opportunity for marketers here, however, isn’t just about product recommendations. This approach can be easily applied to an email subject line, a salutation on a mailed piece, a display media placement or virtually any other form of communication. The more relevant, the more engagement.

What has prevented wide-spread success using certain approaches to targeting and relevancy has been a lack of data and analytics. Folks started dabbling with algorithmic black boxes in the late 1990s, but were stymied by computing-power ability to process large sets of data in required response times. Today, however, these problems have been addressed. In the age of Big Data and massively scalable distributed computing (Hadoop), the power of the data can finally be unleashed. Over the next two years this area will be a key point of innovation. The masses are clamoring for relevant communications, and technology will be central to delivering it.

Tip: Personalization is the behavior of a service changing based on personal information. Here are three rules for “good behaviors” that will banish those eerie feelings of being followed:

• Relationships — Personalization doesn’t work well with strangers. However, if a site or a service establishes a relationship in the form of registration or an opt-in, then it is perceived positively.
• Transparency — Make it clear why the customer is seeing the specific action or recommendation. Don’t be mysterious.
• Customer control — Allow customers to modify “presumed” attributes. Maybe things have changed, or maybe someone else last used their computer or maybe they are buying for someone else. If personalization is done right, more people will be willing to take off the mask of anonymity and share a bit of themselves in order to get a more relevant, valuable online experience.

There’s a lot of data and insight around this topic and other marketing areas in our newly released 2012 Digital Marketer Report. Please download a copy and enjoy. Would also love to hear your thoughts on the topic of targeting and relevancy in the comment box below.

from a marketer’s standpoint there are two early formats that are working best – gaming and commerce

The casual gaming market is explosive. Not just for addictive puzzle games like Angry Birds, but also for advertising sponsored games. The approach here is to provide an engaging, addictive experience that captures the audience’s attention while reserving real estate for advertising. This is the most common advertising usage of the apps, but you will also see “placement” as you do with commercial products in movies.  If you’re interested in this topic, I talk a lot more about mobile apps, mobile scanning and the mobile web in the Experian Marketing Innovation Report 2012.

Blackbox Analytics – like IBM’s Watson from Jeopardy fame, knowing what to show when is based upon a complex algorithm of processing and relating massive volumes of data. Many of these approaches will be self tuning based upon data input and be obscured from the marketer.

Personalization – is driven by static, known attributes. Filling in the right name in a salutation (i.e., Dear Mr. Smith), organizing content around expressed preferences, etc.

Recommendations – focuses on displaying lists of products based on a predictive algorithm. Netflix and Amazon are the two best known examples. Display can be implicit, i.e., which items appear when on the home page, or explicit as when likely lists displayed with an item or promoted via an email.

Relevancy – spans into the content spectrum and covers both personalization and recommendations. Also, uses same algorithmic type approach used in recommendations and Blackbox Analytics.

Read the Experian Marketing Innovation Report 2012 for more insights on this topic and many others that are important to marketers over the coming year.

A common way to view campaigns is a visual workflow that depicts the various stages, treatments or flights of messages in their relative order. More sophisticated tools enable for branching decisions whereby different audiences receive a different message based upon scoring, firmographic, behavioral response or other segmentation schemes. Another aspect some of the tools support is the ability to respond to customers. As opposed to marketing to a pre-established list, in triggered-campaigns, customers self select into the campaign by an action, like completing a web registration, or redeeming a coupon at a POS at which point they receive a message, or series of messages, in response.

My colleagues and I recently created the Experian Marketing Innovation Report 2012 to help address some of the key issues, like campaign management, over the coming year. I hope you will check out our findings and let me know what you think.

Simply put, marketing is everywhere – at every touch-point, around every corner. Consumers today interact with brands on their terms – at the time and place of their choosing. 

In this new world, Good brands gain a complete picture of consumer interests across channels – online, offline, social and mobile. Great brands synthesize this data and harness its power to pinpoint targeting and consistently drive relevant, communications with their customers across all channels.

To turn all of this into reality, however, brands need two critical ingredients:  Vision and a Methodology

Delivering on the Vision

A proven infrastructure of people, process and technology for enhancing customer experience and delivering business impacting customer engagement is essential. Look for a hosted, end-to-end data management solution that leverages a three hub approach to capture and integrate data from across channels, understand how to maximize customer value, and optimize customer interactions with context and relevance. 

Methodology for your Success

Brands have been increasing their marketing sophistication by moving more toward literal one-to-one communication. This movement yields dramatic results for major brands such as Restoration Hardware, William Sonoma, Limited Brands and more.

Methodologies for this increase in marketing sophistication should provide a customized, thoughtful approach or roadmap to improve the brand’s marketing results, i.e. establishing a Marketing Sophistication Curve. By plotting the brand’s current state along the curve, a brand can develop a road map of quick wins and long-term strategies that methodically increase the sophistication of their marketing efforts – increasing engagement, customer loyalty and ultimately, revenue.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  marcus.tewksbury@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tewksbum
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tewksbum

A great brand will provide consumers with a customized experience across all channels. This requires a basis of integrated data that provides a complete view of the consumer and drives actionable marketing strategies and tactics.

As part of this endeavor, brands need to immediately set these priorities:

• Quickly cultivate relationships with new customers. Although welcome streams are slowly rolling among brands, there are methods that can be employed and data that can be integrated for a more customized brand interaction. Welcome streams enhanced with data-driven intelligence typically yield 16-24% improved response.
• Drive active customers to repeat purchase. Based on an just about any average order value, just 2% lift in repeat purchases could yield substantial additional revenue.
• Demonstrate appreciation to the most valuable customers. Along with identifying and treating high-dollar-value customers differently, brands find resounding success is extending the analysis to a consumers’ social graph. Delighting high-value, high-influence consumers can yield exponential returns when response attribution encompasses the social graph.

Brands need to partner with a marketing services provider who can not only deliver on data management, but also solve business problems and provide strategic guidance that challenge them to be better marketers.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  marcus.tewksbury@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tewksbum
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tewksbum

• Point-of-sale information
• 3^rd party syndicated data
• Web and online behavior
• Social
• Mobile
• Search and display
• Offline consumer databases
• Traditional direct channels

The key to building multi-channel, multi-dimensional views of the customer is being fluent enough with the data structures of those channels to understand what the unique attributes are and how they can be related to a common perspective across silos. You need to be fluent in the linkable keys across channels.  For example:

• Traditional – Name, Address, Zip, etc.
• Digital – Cookies, IP Address, Email, etc.
• Social – handle, FacebookID, etc.
• Mobile – phone #, geo location, etc.

A unique approach to this is what Experian calls the “molecule theory”.  This approach addresses how we seek to create the connections between disparate data points, even when the connection needs to be made across multiple intermediary steps to make the connection.  It’s called the “molecule theory” because at times the data maps can resemble one of the old school Tinker Toys molecule models we used to create when we were younger.

The concept also speaks to the reality that to aid marketers, particularly B2C ones like retailers, approaches that yield really good guesses as opposed to truly direct 1:1 results can be a much more effective solution.

Many providers can speak to data integration like this, but very few are fluent.  Most speak to it with a stutter.  Service providers with experience in running complex data management processes will have the background that enables them to reach out and conquer integrations needed in the online and social channels.

Speed and flexibility are, of course, always critical to success. Experienced service providers will get you started fast and support your operational needs for database updates, campaign extracts and report analysis. They will adjust your data model as needed, based on your requests or our consultative recommendations.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  marcus.tewksbury@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tewksbum
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tewksbum

1.  Are your customers getting a multi-channel or cross-channel experience?  If one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, or in other words you are sending the same message, regardless of response, through different channels then you are multi- not cross.  To run an effective cross channel strategy you need to be able to correlate response across channels.
2. Does your marketing organization understand this difference?  And if so, are they structured to do something about it?  If your teams are still silo’d by channel (e.g., email, search, etc.) there is a large probability they can’t see over the walls and they lack the ability to craft communication strategies that are optimized to the customer need as opposed to the channel or campaign.
3. Connecting the dots across digital and social channels ups the ante for most technology organizations. Does yours (or your partners) have the knowhow to make the leap from traditional name and address linkages?  At both the technical level as well the applied business need?

CRM’s star is clearly on the rise again.  Before embracing it, however, you need to have a deep understanding of your organizations ability to effectively execute against it.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  marcus.tewksbury@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tewksbum
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tewksbum

Twitter (setup an account. Start tweeting)
Tweetdeck (setup multiple searches, learn the lexicon of Tweets, evaluate brand usage)
LinkedIn (if you don’t have one… not sure what to say)
Facebook (focus on how brands are engaging on the site. Where are they present, and what are they doing?)
SlideShare (open an account. Post a presentation. Friend / Share / and cross promote your presentation)
YouTube (open an account and post a video. Explore the metrics)
Wordpress (or whichever blogging platform. Setup a new site)

Then, start advancing into more advanced subjects:

Bit.ly (figure out what it is. How can it be used? Across social, digital content, etc.)
QR Codes (go to Google, set one up. Find an example where and how they are being used)
SpredFast (look at the broader implications for syndicating content more broadly)
LoopFuse.com (one of the marketing automation vendors. Investigate what the technology does. How is it different from plain old ESP’s)
GoogleAnalytics (familiarize yourself with the metrics of websites)
GoogleAdsense (open it up, fund a baby account, figure out how the AdNetwork works and where and how both PPC terms and banners are pushed and to where).

Also, engage with communities. Find a way to be an active member and an ambassador for your brand (a lot, lot more coming on this front):

Focus.com
Discus.com (spelling)
Quora
LinkedIn Groups
StumbleUpon

Figure out who the players are in your space. Think of it as forensic research. Look at the thought leadership they are putting out. Review their client and leadership rosters. Create a list of terms they are using and assess who you think they are appealing to across the marketing organizations?

Something else to do is start evaluating the communication strategy of your favorite brands. Register for their email programs (all of them), sign up loyalty programs, mailers, tweet about them (can you get $5 off your next pizza?) do whatever you can to engage with them to find out all you can. Start getting a sense for who you think is doing it well, and who isn’t.

There are a host of other ideas and approaches we could discuss here, but the key is to just get started. With all of this, you need to be diligent and consistent. Like training for a marathon, or losing weight, this isn’t going to be accomplished in a single session. This should be a regular part of your daily routine.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  marcus.tewksbury@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tewksbum
Linkedin:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/tewksbum